The jobs bill contains two major provisions. First, it would exempt businesses hiring the unemployed from the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax through December and give them an additional $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year. The Social Security trust fund would be reimbursed for the lost revenue.

Second, it would extend highway and mass transit programs through the end of the year and pump in $20 billion in time for the spring construction season. The money would make up for lower-than-expected gasoline tax revenues.

Despite doubts among many lawmakers that it will create many jobs, the House passed legislation giving companies that hire the jobless a temporary payroll tax break. The measure passed 217-201 on a mostly party-line vote. The bill also extends federal highway programs through the end of the year.

Turn the Beat Around….at NJSA’s Executive Leadership Conference, April 28-29 at The Borgata, Atlantic City.

This bill is designed to encourage employers who must reduce their employees’ work hours because of economic conditions to avoid layoffs by sharing the remaining work. That is achieved by permitting, under certain circumstances, a full-time employee to receive unemployment benefits when the employee’s weekly work time is reduced by 10% or more. The bill also permits the employee to attend an approved training program while receiving those benefits.

The bill also provides that an employer of at least 10 full-time non-seasonal employees may provide a shared work program if approved by the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The program may be approved for one year with annual renewals upon request. The employer is required to sustain existing fringe benefits levels, not to hire additional part-time or full-time employees; or make unreasonable revisions of workloads; to provide information needed to monitor compliance; and to certify that if a labor union represents the employees, it has agreed to the terms of the program.

Just recently, on January 6, 2010, the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division held that business to business sexual harassment was prohibited under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD).

In, J.T.’s Tire Service, Inc. v. United Rentals North America, Inc., 2010 WL 26495 (N.J. Super. Jan. 6, 2010), the owner of a tire company (the plaintiffs) had been selling approximately $30,000 a month in tires to a NJ branch office of an equipment rental company (the defendant) since 1998.  In 2005, the branch manager of the equipment company allegedly began to periodically sexually harass the tire company owner through 2007.  The owner repeatedly rebuffed the branch manager’s sexual advances, which resulted in the branch manager withholding business from the tire company.  By November 2007, the branch manager began delaying payments to the tire company and, in December 2007, the branch manager terminated the equipment rental company’s business relationship with the tire company.

The tire company and owner sued the equipment company (for whatever reason, the branch manager does not appear to have been sued individually as well), claiming that, among other things, the equipment company had engaged in unlawful sex discrimination (sexual harassment) in violation of the LAD.  Specifically, the plaintiffs claimed that the defendant had violated Section 10:5-12(l) of the LAD, which makes it unlawful “[f]or any person to refuse to buy from, . . . contract with, . . . or otherwise do business with any other person on the basis of . . . sex. . . .”  The lower court granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims.

The Appellate Court reversed the lower court and denied the defendant’s motion.  According to the Appellate Court, based upon existing New Jersey court decisions (including, for example, cases previously holding that the refusal to do business with independent contractors on the basis of age, sex, or handicap violates this same Section of the LAD), the actual language of Section 10:5-12(l), and the social policies supporting the LAD, it is clear that refusing to do business on the basis of sex is unlawful under the LAD.

In reaching this conclusion, the Appellate Court also noted that such violations are different from those LAD claims brought under Section 10:5-12(a) involving violations related to employment (i.e., the far more common type of LAD claim), and which section would not have covered the plaintiffs’ claims.

As a result of this decision, all staffing firms – and particularly those who classify individuals or third parties as independent contractors – should continue to pay close attention to potential discrimination issues, and especially with the types of co-employment implications that always arise in the staffing context.

AST, which has been providing fully integrated staffing software solutions to the staffing industry for 25 years, has teamed up with the New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA) to help put on a series of six seminars on “Web 2.0 and the Staffing Industry.”  NJSA, founded in 1960, is an industry trade association of direct hire, contract and temporary staffing firms. NJSA represents members professionally engaged in all areas of personnel services including search, recruitment, placement and temporary help services.

Edison, NJ February 4, 2009 – Last week Everett Reiss, project and account manager for AST, was the main speaker for the first of six seminars that NJSA is presenting at the Sheraton Edison Hotel, in the Raritan Center.  Reiss spoke on “Social Media Success Stories in the Staffing Industry” and gave the 70 plus attendees three action points to use in formulating a social media strategy for their staffing firms.  To engage the attending staffing executives and professionals, Reiss used a video interview with Tracy Tillapaugh, technical recruiter for Contemporary Personnel Staffing in Liverpool, NY; and a panel consisting of Elaine Balady, Co-Owner of The Assurance Group, Robert Derbabian, Vice President at Wells Fargo Capital Finance, and Steve Isenberg, President and Founder of ASJ Partners.  Find highlights of the interview with Tracy Tillapaugh at AST’s Mad Staffing Blog.

NJSA’s next “Web 2.0 and the Staffing Industry” seminar is going to be presented by a Northeast Account Executive, John Hassett, on “How To Use Linkedin for Staffing Firms” on February 23, 2010 from 5:00-7:30pm at the Sheraton Edison Hotel.  You can register for this evening forum on the ten easy steps recruiters and sales staff can use to build community on Linkedin on the NJSA website.

NJSA’s remaining four forums, all of which are at the Sheraton Edison Hotel are:

• “How to Use Social Media to Bolster Your Recruiting Efforts” presented by Everett Reiss, project manager for the staffing software firm, AST on March 23, 2010 at 8:00-10:00am.
• “How to Twitter and Source Candidates” presented by Rob Tyson, CPC, President and CEO, Bonifield Associates on April 20, 2010 at 5:00-7:30pm.
• “Building Awareness, Influence, Reputation, and Authority Using Facebook for Staffing and Recruiting Professionals” presented by Tracey Madden, CPC, CTS, President of McIntosh Staffing Resources, LLC on May 18, 2010 at 5:00-7:30pm.
• “Building Profitable Web 2.0 Activities Into Your Daily Work Lives” presented by Everett Reiss, project manager for the staffing software firm, AST on June 22, 2010 at 8:00-10:00am.

For more details on the “Web 2.0 and the Staffing Industry” seminar check out the NJSA’s 2010 Business Issues Expert Resources Forums e-brochure that Patricia Koziol, Executive Director & Recording Secretary of NJSA put together.

About New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA): The New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA) is an industry trade association of direct hire, contract and temporary staffing firms. NJSA represents members professionally engaged in all areas of personnel services including search, recruitment, placement and temporary help services. All levels of employment and vocational disciplines (from warehouse and distribution staff to scientific and medical personnel) are served by specialists among the members. We are an affiliated chapter of the American Staffing Association and the National Association of Personnel Services, the national organizations representing direct hire and temporary staffing firms in all fifty states.

About Applied Systems Technology (AST): Applied Systems Technology provides fully integrated staffing agency software to mid market staffing agencies throughout the United States. Its unique ‘outcomes’ approach to automation starts with helping senior management align the projects around very specific measureable goals relating to the operations of their business. By fusing their business processes to automated tools, the client companies are able to grow their businesses with significantly improved operating ratios. The ability to script business rules around desired outcomes in the staffing software itself provides staffing operators significantly greater control over the business.

Last week Governor Christie warned New Jersey businesses that they can expect an increase of up to $1,000 per employee in their unemployment tax starting July 1 unless the federal government helps the state replenish the fund. Business taxes are increased by law when the fund’s balance dips below a certain level as measured every March. Christie says the fund will be $1.6 billion in debt by March.

The Governor said his administration will ask the federal government to forgive the debt, but he said the state can’t afford to pump money into the fund to stop the tax increase. New Jersey faces a deficit of more than $9 billion for the 2011 budget year, which begins in July. Christie said that over $3.6 billion has been raided from the fund over the past decade.

The 2010 Business Issues-Expert Resources seminar series, sponsored by NJSA Industry Partners, will kick off its first breakfast meeting on January 26 at the Sheraton Edison Hotel.  This is a FREE EVENT for owners, managers and employees of staffing firms who want to utilize the various social networking tools available for sourcing clients and candidates. 

There will be five other breakfast/evening sessions on web-related and social networking topics – the most complete educational series on these important tools for the staffing industry.

You can click here for the registration brochure for all the sessions, and please feel free to sign up for all of them or one at a time.  The breakfast sessions are FREE and the evening sessions are at a nominal cost.

Plan to attend with your recruiters, sales associates, and technology staff.  If you have any questions, call the NJSA office at 973-283-0072.

On October 5, 2009, the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (“NJDOL”) issued a proposed amendment to the regulations governing the New Jersey Unemployment Compensation Law.  Specifically, the NJDOL is seeking to amend the existing definition of “misconduct” set forth in N.J.A.C. 12:17-10.2(a) for purposes of determining when a claimant may be disqualified from receiving benefits when they have engaged in such “misconduct” in connection with their work.

Under the existing regulation, misconduct “must be improper, intentional, connected with one’s work, malicious, and within the individual’s control, and is either a deliberate violation of the employer’s rules or a disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of an employee.” Under the NJDOL’s proposed amended regulation, however, “misconduct” would now be defined as “an act of wanton or willful disregard of the employer’s interest, a deliberate violation of the employer’s rules, a disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of his employee, or negligence in such degree or recurrence as to manifest culpability, wrongful intent, or evil design, or show an intentional and substantial disregard of the employer’s interest or of the employee’s duties and obligations to the employer.”

Consequently, among other things, employers would also appear to be able to establish “misconduct” more easily based upon a new negligence standard. To date, the proposed amended regulation has not yet been adopted.  However, written comments were required to be submitted to the NJDOL by December 4, 2009, and we anticipate that the NJDOL will ultimately adopt a regulation modifying the definition of such “misconduct” in some form.

Staffing NJ PAC contributed to the campaigns of the following Assembly representatives who were reelected: Jay Webber, Joe Cryan, Nellie Pou, Joe Malone, Upendra Chivukula, and Michael Doherty.